Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, old-school publisher who fought against corporate behemoths
Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, who has died aged 85, was once hailed by The Daily Telegraph as 'the last of the great lunching publishers'; after three decades with Hamish Hamilton, he struck out in 1989 to launch his own firm, Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, in a valiant but doomed stand against the increasing corporatisation of publishing.
At Hamish Hamilton, where he was managing director from 1974, he had earned a reputation as one of the best editors in Britain. Among the authors he guided to success there were Susan Hill (who would only go on with a novel after he had approved the first chapter), William Boyd, Jane Gardam and Paul Theroux.
He liked to size up a book's potential over a long lunch with an author or agent, without recourse to the marketing department's views on its saleability. Trusting to his instincts, rather than the dictates of common sense, often proved lucrative.
He came away from one lunch telling himself he must have been mad to offer an advertising executive a £5,000 advance for a memoir about living in France; but in the event Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence sold six million copies.
He did not disdain blatant money-spinners, a book of photographs by Prince Andrew among them. At the other end of the intellectual spectrum, he paid £80,000 for the rights to Richard Ellmann's biography of Oscar Wilde (1987) – a record-breaking sum for a literary life. It sold so well that literary biographers found their ill-remunerated trade briefly awash with money as other publishers scrambled to emulate its success.
He began to feel increasingly out of place in the publishing landscape of the 1980s, however, as international conglomerates mounted aggressive campaigns to buy up venerable British imprints. In 1985 Hamish Hamilton was sold to the US-backed Penguin Group; four years later Sinclair-Stevenson resigned as managing director.
'Corporate publishing does not encourage editors' enthusiasms and eccentricities … [so] an anodyne, homogenised culture has broken out,' Sinclair-Stevenson told the Telegraph. He had tired of endless unproductive meetings and decisions being taken across the Atlantic by executives he did not know.
Penguin was taken aback by his departure – he was told that he would have continued to be 'tolerated as an anomaly' – and the parting was acrimonious.
The following year he launched Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, housed in a mews off the Old Brompton Road, with Lord Rees-Mogg as chairman; with the help of his old friend Tim Waterstone, the bookseller, he secured backing from 3i Group. He was determined to prove that an independent company specialising in 'upmarket publishing' ('I hate the expression, but it does describe what I am trying to do') could thrive.
Several of his big-name authors at Hamish Hamilton took a risk and went with him. He launched his new firm with books by three of them: Peter Ackroyd's biography of Dickens and novels by AN Wilson and William Boyd. Rose Tremain, Sybille Bedford, Bernice Rubens and Maureen Duffy also defected.
The new venture was well-publicised, with the press keen to support the underdog against the American, Australian and German conglomerates devouring UK publishing. Much of the coverage was devoted to a discussion of whether Sinclair-Stevenson was inspired or insane in giving Ackroyd a £600,000 advance for two biographies.
Days before the firm launched, Sinclair-Stevenson's glamorous secretary Sarah Johnson outed herself to The Guardian as the long-term mistress of Leo Cooper, husband of Jilly. Her employer was suspected of guiding the timing of her revelation; in any event, the launch party was thronged with press.
The Sinclair-Stevenson list boasted some bestsellers, such as the memoirs of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, and enjoyed a good deal of prestige: under its aegis Rose Tremain secured the James Tait Black Prize and the underrated poet James Michie won the Hawthornden Prize for his collected verse.
The Telegraph's Jeremy Lewis feared, however, that Sinclair-Stevenson took too little interest in 'those solid if unglamorous 'bread and-butter items' – books on fishing or bridge or accountancy – that plod steadily on and pay the bills.' The dream of independence proved short-lived: in 1992 the firm was sold at a loss to the conglomerate Reed. Tim Waterstone told the press he had learnt his lesson about investing in friends' businesses.
Sinclair-Stevenson was retained to run the imprint, but his role was gradually downgraded to 'ambassador-at-large' (or, as wags in the company asserted, 'ambassador-at-lunch'). He was powerless to prevent Reed from dropping his poetry list and refusing to honour some authors' contracts.
In 1995 Reed sold Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd to Random House, and his connection with the imprint that bore his name formally ended. He took the unusual decision to cross the Rubicon from publishing to become a literary agent – 'I suspect it will annoy some people, so that makes me all the keener to do it.'
Although his agency remained his focus thereafter, he was not quite done with publishing. In 2000 Random House decided to wind up Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, and he asked if he could have his name back for a new venture.
Random House loftily agreed that he could, as long as he published nothing which would bring into disrepute a name with which they were associated. He wrote back to ask if his first proposed publication, a new translation of the Bible in 24 volumes, met this criterion; Random House did not deign to reply.
Christopher Terence Sinclair-Stevenson was born on June 27 1939, the son of George Sinclair-Stevenson, an officer in the Coldstream Guards and later a leading lawyer in Hong Kong, and his wife Gloria, née Gordon. Christopher inherited an Argentine peerage descended from a paternal great-great-uncle, but chose not to use the title, Baron Belgrado.
He came from a long line of soldiers and was destined for Sandhurst, but at Eton – where he was remembered as 'a scholarly schoolmaster's dream but the despair of the games master' – his housemaster persuaded him that Cambridge might be more suitable, and he read modern languages at St John's College.
In 1961 he became an editor at Hamish Hamilton, and came to look on Jamie Hamilton, who had founded the business in 1931, as a father figure, absorbing his belief in running a small-scale firm founded on the personal relationships between editors and authors.
He proved adept at publicity wheezes. When he published Raymond Briggs's anti-nuclear graphic novel When the Wind Blows, he had a copy sent to every MP, leading inevitably to usefully noisy outrage from the pro-nuclear element.
One bestseller he missed out on was Spycatcher, the controversial memoir by the ex-MI5 officer Peter Wright. Wright's agent Giles Gordon reported that Sinclair-Stevenson agreed terms, 'but then backed out after a visit from a sinister person in a bowler hat'.
His martial ancestry remained apparent, according to one commentator, in his 'unpublisher-like neatness of dress'. Unpunctual authors attested that he was 'tougher and more autocratic than his elegant, easygoing exterior might suggest'.
One of his closest friends was Sir Alec Guinness, from whom he finally coaxed the long-delayed first volume of his autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, in 1985. Sinclair-Stevenson later became his literary agent: the hardest part of the job, he recalled, was, on book tours, trying to prevent press or public from asking the great actor anything about Star Wars, which he had come to loathe.
Sinclair-Stevenson also gained a reputation as a popular historian in his own right. He wrote books on the Jacobite Risings of the early 18th century (Inglorious Rebellion, 1971); the Gordon Highlanders (The Life of a Regiment, 1974); the Hanoverian Georges (Blood Royal, 1979); and France (That Sweet Enemy, 1987). He also translated works by Simenon. He was founding director of the Southwark Literature Festival from 2000.
He reviewed often for the Telegraph, and was treasured for his waspishly neat reflections on memoirs by his fellow publishers. Of Tom Maschler he wrote: 'There is… something rather endearing about a man so convinced of his brilliance, as if Mr Pooter had come to Bloomsbury.'
Sinclair-Stevenson retired last year and Andrew Lownie took on his list of clients.
He married, in 1965, Deborah Walker-Smith, daughter of the Conservative politician Lord Broxbourne. She died in 2022.
Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, born June 27 1939, died January 20 2025
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